The Women and ESCR working group of ESCR-Net is pleased to announce the Call for Applications to participate in the training programme of the Fifth Round of the Women’s Human Rights Training Institute (WHRTI), 2013-2015.

The Women and ESCR working group is collaborating with the Women's Human Rights Training Institute which is coordinated by the Bulgarian Gender Research Foundation, in partnership with the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR) and the Network of East-West Women (NEWW), and in cooperation with representatives of the Euroregional Center for Public Initiatives (ECPI).

The Institute is a unique initiative founded in 2004 as a first-of-its-kind programme aimed at building the capacity of young lawyers from Central and Eastern European and the Newly Independent States (CEE/NIS) for litigation on women's rights issues, including:

► violence against women,

► sexual and reproductive health and rights, and

► employment discrimination.

The WHRTI provides practical skills for development of strategic litigationin the region both at the national and international levels through using regional and universal human rights mechanisms such as the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), and the Optional Protocol to CEDAW as well as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights(ICCPR), the Optional Protocol to ICCPR, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and eventually its Optional Protocol.